{"title":"Citizens’ perceptions on public finance literacy: Familiarity, importance, actual use and proposed learning objectives","authors":"Sotirios Karatzimas","doi":"10.1177/01447394231159998","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Recent literature highlights the importance of providing citizens public sector accounting education to help them become public finance literate. This study performs a questionnaire-based survey to a convenient sample of citizens to collect their perspective on the topic. The results indicate an average familiarity of the respondents with key public finance concepts, with male respondents appearing more familiar. The respondents place more importance in being able to monitor and assess the state’s financial performance and condition rather than that of the local government. In practice, when making voting decisions during municipal elections they focus less on financial information, compared to when it comes to state elections, mainly due to difficulties in accessing the municipalities’ financial information. The respondents are further supportive of receiving public sector accounting education as they believe it could help them monitor the local and state government’s financial condition and performance, take more rational election decisions and more actively participate to public matters. They perceive that such an education should take place from high-school and not earlier, and they find useful this educational process to continue via online and on-site seminars. Finally, they make recommendations on the specific content (learning objectives) of public sector accounting education at the different educational levels (school, high-school, municipal seminars, and online seminars).","PeriodicalId":44241,"journal":{"name":"Teaching Public Administration","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Teaching Public Administration","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01447394231159998","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Recent literature highlights the importance of providing citizens public sector accounting education to help them become public finance literate. This study performs a questionnaire-based survey to a convenient sample of citizens to collect their perspective on the topic. The results indicate an average familiarity of the respondents with key public finance concepts, with male respondents appearing more familiar. The respondents place more importance in being able to monitor and assess the state’s financial performance and condition rather than that of the local government. In practice, when making voting decisions during municipal elections they focus less on financial information, compared to when it comes to state elections, mainly due to difficulties in accessing the municipalities’ financial information. The respondents are further supportive of receiving public sector accounting education as they believe it could help them monitor the local and state government’s financial condition and performance, take more rational election decisions and more actively participate to public matters. They perceive that such an education should take place from high-school and not earlier, and they find useful this educational process to continue via online and on-site seminars. Finally, they make recommendations on the specific content (learning objectives) of public sector accounting education at the different educational levels (school, high-school, municipal seminars, and online seminars).
期刊介绍:
Teaching Public Administration (TPA) is a peer-reviewed journal, published three times a year, which focuses on teaching and learning in public sector management and organisations. TPA is committed to publishing papers which promote critical thinking about the practice and process of teaching and learning as well as those which examine more theoretical and conceptual models of teaching and learning. It offers an international forum for the debate of a wide range of issues relating to how skills and knowledge are transmitted and acquired within public sector/not for profit organisations. The Editors welcome papers which draw upon multi-disciplinary ways of thinking and working and, in particular, we are interested in the following themes/issues: Learning from international practice and experience; Curriculum design and development across all levels from pre-degree to post graduate including professional development; Professional and Taught Doctoral Programmes; Reflective Practice and the role of the Reflective Practitioner; Co-production and co-construction of the curriculum; Developments within the ‘Public Administration’ discipline; Reviews of literature and policy statements.